Abstract:

The assessment of the progress of education systems over time is at the top of the agenda of governments and educational authorities worldwide. This requires the collection of outcome indicators for different educational stages and resources/funding available. Frontier methods enable obtaining an overall picture of efficiency and effectiveness of educational systems. The European Commission monitors the performance of education systems in Member States according to the strategic framework “Education and Training 2020“(ET2020). However, studies dedicated to the assessment of the performance of education systems at country level based on panel data are very scarce. The framework used to evaluate European education systems is based on the construction of a composite indicator adopting a ``benefit-of-the-doubt'' approach. The evaluation of performance change over time is done using a global Malmquist index. The index is estimated for triennial periods within the time window 2006-2018 to understand trends in more detail for 29 European countries analysing the ET2020 indicators. We observed the convergence of European countries for half of indicators. The global index revealed productivity improvements in European educational systems, with a positive value of efficiency change, and a slight drop in technological change (or frontier shift). The results obtained can help monitoring convergence in terms of the educational achievements amongst European countries.

Acknowledgment:
This research is funded by the European Social Fund according to the activity ‘Improvement of researchers’ qualification by implementing world-class R&D projects’ of Measure No. 09.3.3-LMT-K-712. The project DOTSUT-39 (09.3.3-LMT-K-712-01-0018) / LSS-250000-57.

Keywords:

Education system, frontier methods, Malmquist index, Europe.